Dynamic Models Towards Operator and Engineer Training: Virtual Environment

Abstract The simulation of chemical processes is an important tool for solving problems in Computer Aided Process Engineering (CAPE) and the use of commercial simulators is essential for this task. In this work, the intention is to create a virtual environment for industrial process and data representations for operator and engineer training. The applications focus on the separation process dynamic and control. The first case is an azeotropic distillation process. It was used an industrial plant data to illustrate the importance of reliable thermodynamic data to the process simulation. The system studied is the ethanol/water separation using cyclohexane as mass separating agent. As the second case, it was used a refinery data to simulate the debutanizer column of a fluid catalytic cracking unit in order to make this complex problem understandable, well represented and easily reproducible in a simulation framework. In this case, optimization, regulatory control, PID tuning and model predictive control were considered. The energy consumption was minimized using the SQP method. Simulations were performed using HYSYS. Plant process simulator.